my first official modified flash light

Ok so I just finished modifying an old AA minimag I had laying around for so long I don't even remember where I got it from. The bug got in me when I was putzing around one day and noticed that I had a aspheric lens from some projector I had taken apart at my old work that fit perfectly in the minimag.

here is a shot of all the flash light bits..


I have no lathe or milling machine so I thought I would try and use my drill press to cut a copper lug to fit in the body of the flash light. It took some time and a lot of cutting oil but it did actually work pretty good.


I ordered a BB nextgen 1000ma from the sandwich shoppe and a luxeon K2 from ledsupply. Here is a picture of me starting to put it together.


Here is a shot of the copper lug with the LED attached to it press fit in the flashlight, I also made a plastic spacer to make up for the fact that I am only using one ultrafire 14500 li-ion battery to power the thing. I forgot to take a picture of that though..


Here it is finished and assembled..

I ordered a clicky switch for the tail, but it hasn't come yet and I wanted to see if this thing actually worked.. lol


Some crappy beam shots... I am not very good at taking these yet..
tight beam


wide beam


And no comments on my Ghetto sound system for my shop! :laughing:

Very good my friend..Bravo!Keep moding

Thats a nice bit of work great pictures as well.
My first LED mod was nothing more than an emitter swap, and even then it was on a star so nothing complex.
I like the copper heatsink, kudos on getting a slug out of that bar it really does not like being worked with.
Keep it up

Very nice work! Let me know if you decide to mod someone else's mini. Mine will be in the mail. :twothumbs

Thanks for all the comments! This little guy turned out good enough that I really want to start in on the full sized maglite I have now.

I finally got the clicky switch in the mail yesterday, here are some pictures of the completed flashlight now..

Wow, that minimag puts out a good bit of light! Great job on the mod! :thumbsup:

very cool mod :twothumbs

The aspheric lens works well with your light.
Have you tried to focus the lens so that the beam shows
a projection of the die ?

tx101 said:

very cool mod :twothumbs

The aspheric lens works well with your light.
Have you tried to focus the lens so that the beam shows
a projection of the die ?

Click to expand...

Yes I have and it is cool.... but don't know how to take a picture of it with my little canon camera.

jason 77 said:

Yes I have and it is cool.... but don't know how to take a picture of it with my little canon camera.

Click to expand...

Do it during the day so the camera's auto-brightness feature doesn't wash the spot out.

Wow, nice mod. I really like the way the tight beam looks on your mini.

Do you have any specs on the projector you got the aspheric from. I would really like to replicate what you did there. It looks like you have the best of both, tight focus and wide beam if needed.

I have a 12 volt power just like that one . I think I bought it for a ham radio , good work jason............marty

somename said:

Wow, nice mod. I really like the way the tight beam looks on your mini.

Do you have any specs on the projector you got the aspheric from. I would really like to replicate what you did there. It looks like you have the best of both, tight focus and wide beam if needed.

Click to expand...

Well I took some pictures of the lens while measuring it with my digital caliper.. I have no idea how to tell the focal length of the lens though. Also it looks to have some sort of coating on it but again no way for me to tell what kind it is...

Ok an update on my flashlight... somehow the clicky switch got like cross threaded or something and the only way to get it off was to wrench it out, destroying it and the flashlight body in the process.


So I had to by another clicky switch and mini maglite.. on the plus side it allowed me to take a picture of my ghetto plastic spacer I made for the light if anyone wanted to see it.. just waiting on the clicky switch to come in the mail now and hopefully not get crossthreaded again.

Nice work.
I have the same drill press in my man-cave. I'm sure your ghetto audio beats my AM radio.

:thumbsup:

tx101 said:

very cool mod :twothumbs

The aspheric lens works well with your light.
Have you tried to focus the lens so that the beam shows
a projection of the die ?

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing.
This first project of yours came out very well with the aspheric and the K2. Nice improvisation with the drill press.
Is that really just a hole saw bit I see attached that was used for the copper slug?

I have an old mini mag around here I might want to try something like this with. Similar stuff in the shop (no metal lathe).

Would love to see some beamshots outside, both tight & more open focus (nice you were able to get a good beam out of both from the pics posted).

Pretty impressive first foray!

Chauncey Gardner said:

I was thinking the same thing.
This first project of yours came out very well with the aspheric and the K2. Nice improvisation with the drill press.
Is that really just a hole saw bit I see attached that was used for the copper slug?

I have an old mini mag around here I might want to try something like this with. Similar stuff in the shop (no metal lathe).

Would love to see some beamshots outside, both tight & more open focus (nice you were able to get a good beam out of both from the pics posted).

Pretty impressive first foray!

Click to expand...

Yeah it is just a hole saw I had and decided to try to drill a plug out of it... set my drill press on the slowest speed I could and slowly cut the plug out. I didn't think it would work at all! LOL

That looks like a double convex lens in your micrometer. I tried one in a 3D Mag and got a terrible beam, so had given up on double convex, but they obviously can work quite well. You live under a lucky star to have one that works so well with a Minimag. Thanks for sharing!

Great to see the shape of the lens is not that important once it is focusable!

got this blue bezel from amazon a few days ago. I was worried that since the aspherical lens I am using in this flashlight came out of a projector I took apart and as such would be impossible to replace if it got damaged, I wanted a way to protect it a bit. I think I might try and paint it black to match the rest of the flash light?